Oral Answers to Questions
Gavin Newlands Excerpts(10 months ago)
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Gavin Newlands (Paisley and Renfrewshire North) (SNP)
In answer to my written question, it was confirmed that active travel was down to just 1% of departmental spending last year—but that is positively lavish compared with 0.4% this year and 0.5% next year. The Scottish Government will spend £320 million—10% of their transport budget—which is greater than the active travel budget for the whole of England. Will the Minister urgently review active travel spend to ensure that the poorest, who rely more on walking and wheeling to get around, are not disproportionately impacted during this Tory cost of living crisis?
Jesse Norman
The fact of the matter is, through both covid and the Barnett formula, the Scottish Government have been funded at levels that vastly exceed those available in England. If one is a Herefordian, as I am, one looks with astonishment at the increased levels of spending north of the border and wishes that, in many ways, a similar rural landscape such as our own were supported as well as that.
Gavin Newlands (Paisley and Renfrewshire North) (SNP)
Scots are used to getting a poor and unreliable cross-border rail service, but recently the cross-border air service provided by British Airways, particularly from Glasgow, has been awful. That said, we need to get on with decarbonising aviation, so when will we see the airspace modernisation process simplified and accelerated, not decelerated? When will the Government bring forward price stability plans for sustainable aviation fuels, which everyone bar the Treasury knows has to happen?
Mr Harper
On the hon. Member’s first point, the work on airspace modernisation is under way, as he knows. On his second point, this Government are leading the progress on sustainable aviation fuels worldwide. We published the new report, which set out some clear plans, and we published our response to it. We are taking that forward and we are at the leading edge of this work globally, setting the agenda, as I hope he would welcome.
Williams-Shapps Plan for Rail
Gavin Newlands Excerpts(10 months, 4 weeks ago)
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Gavin Newlands (Paisley and Renfrewshire North) (SNP)
It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Ms Fovargue. I congratulate the hon. Member for Cleethorpes (Martin Vickers) on securing this debate. We have heard from colleagues, and indeed a former colleague, on the Transport Committee. I agreed with much of what they said, but not necessarily the conclusions they drew.
We are two years on from the publication of the Williams review, and in that two years we have seen any prospect of high-speed rail serving north of Manchester removed completely. Even the remaining parts of HS2, when opened, will now terminate near Wormwood Scrubs rather than travel into central London to Euston. That is a boon for prison visiting, but hardly useful for connecting to the centre of the city, which was one of the original points of HS2.
Cities such as Leeds and Bradford have been kicked off the HS2 map and offered trams in return. Like Scotland, they will be stuck at the end of what, in high-speed rail terms, will be branch lines. Even the crown jewel in the review—the formation of GBR—has been kicked into the long grass, as if the Government here have an exhaustive and time-consuming legislative programme to get through in this place, and days were not collapsing early, which we frequently have.
Answers to my written questions published this week show that £64 million has been spent over the last two years on the GBR transition. If GBR is being mothballed until after the election—if there is a change of Government, we will be looking at long after that for any action—those costs will continue to accrue and we will be left with a bill into the hundreds of millions for an organisation that, essentially, or officially, does not exist.
The former Secretary of State intervened at the last minute to slap his name on the front of the report. Given that he is now firmly in the sidings and stuck with no route in sight, I wonder whether he regrets his burst of self-publicity, although I think we all know the answer to that. It has been left to his successors to pick up the pieces and make the case for the review and its recommendations, but No. 10 and the Chancellor are clearly not listening, because by their actions—and inaction—they are showing just how low down rail and transport more generally is on their list of priorities. I feel for the Minister because his Department is being targeted by the Treasury for swingeing cuts. The Williams review called for a 30-year strategy for the rail network, but that simply cannot happen when the Treasury sees transport as an easy target for cuts.
Williams ruled out public ownership and public control, yet as we have seen with ScotRail and the Caledonian Sleeper, the Scottish Government disagree. The UK Government insist that the private sector railway works efficiently, but it clearly does not. The review said:
“Simplification is more important than nationalisation”,
but while the rest of the UK continues to have passenger services under private operation, that simplification cannot happen. Those who receive the new passenger service contracts envisaged by Williams will still extract profit from the system, and the profit will still come from the public one way or another, whether it is from unregulated fares or direct via the DFT contracts. It is not simplification; it is just a tweaked continuation of the present system.
Scotland was the last part of the UK to see its railways privatised and the first to bring them back under full public control. We have heard many times in recent years that Scotland’s railway and the partnership between ScotRail and Network Rail in Scotland has provided much of the template for the GBR operation—if indeed it comes to pass. However, the semi-integration of track and train is despite Westminster, not because of it. Transport Scotland and the Scottish Government are, as per, trying to operate with one arm tied behind their back, with the operator being fully devolved but the track and infrastructure network still reserved.
What is needed now to complete the integration in Scotland is for Network Rail to be brought under the control of the Scottish Parliament, with a Government that are committed to rail in the long term, regardless of the mindset of the Treasury. That is in part being driven by the target to decarbonise Scotland’s railway by 2035—a target that we are well on the way to meeting, showing how a Scottish Government with control over services are marrying their policy objectives with that of the railway.
Thirty years after the Railways Act 1993, which began the privatisation of the system, we are still seeing the same mistakes repeated and the same political ideology standing in the way of a real plan for our rail network over the next 30 years. The truth is that, while Williams-Shapps may have offered the possibility of a sea change on the network down south, we are now likely to see its demise by a thousand cuts, with its core ideal delayed for who knows how many years.
To conclude, we have GBR on the back burner, possibly indefinitely; HS2 curtailed; the north of England bearing the brunt of cuts yet again; a Treasury on the warpath ahead of any election promises; and no end to the fragmentation and profit-driven structure that has demonstrably failed over the decades. It is time the Government went back to the drawing board, looked again at Williams’s integrated rail plan and their 13-year track record of cuts and more cuts to improvement programmes—cuts that never seem to affect Greater London to the same extent as they affect everywhere else—and started building a railway fit for the future, rather than patching up the work of the great engineers of the Victorian era who built our railways.
Oral Answers to Questions
Gavin Newlands Excerpts(11 months ago)
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Gavin Newlands (Paisley and Renfrewshire North) (SNP)
I associate those on the SNP Benches with the Secretary of State’s comments on the horrendous rail incident in India.
Last week, my hon. Friend the Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun (Alan Brown) and I visited the Cromarty Firth, Aberdeen and Orkney to see the real progress in Scotland’s renewables and transport decarbonisation sectors, including the public charger roll-out, where Orkney has the highest number per capita in the UK—four times the English rate outside of London—and Scotland has twice as many rapid chargers per head. Surely that shows the fundamental role of Government in driving transport decarbonisation. The low numbers in England outside of London highlight the danger of leaving it to the market.
Jesse Norman
I do not accept the premise of that argument. We have discussed it in the Select Committee. My hon. Friend the Member for Wimbledon (Stephen Hammond) was right, because he highlighted the different technologies that can be used rapidly to extend charge points, including gullies and pop-up charge points. We are in the process of rapid expansion and change, and the House would expect that to continue. The amount of private sector investment that we have already triggered or will be triggering through the mandate once it is on the statute book will drive that process still faster.
Gavin Newlands
What the Minister says ignores the reality that the gap between Scotland and England on chargers is widening, rather than narrowing. What we have seen in Scotland is a party that believes in the power of Government to benefit transport. We have EV infrastructure outstripping England, a publicly owned rail service scrapping peak-time fares, many times more zero-emission buses ordered and on the road, and active travel spending increasing to more than £300 million while budgets here are butchered. Is it not time that the Government admitted that the Thatcherite deregulation model has failed completely and instead got to work helping the state to build a transport network fit for the 21st century?
Jesse Norman
I do not accept that at all. It is inevitable with a change of this magnitude that it will be essential for state interventions to trigger private investment. That will go in the first instance where it can trigger additional growth in the market. We use the LEVI fund and other mechanisms to ensure equity across the country.
Heathrow Airport Expansion
Gavin Newlands Excerpts(11 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Gavin Newlands (Paisley and Renfrewshire North) (SNP)
I congratulate the hon. Member for Putney (Fleur Anderson) on securing the debate and on putting across her constituents’ position against expansion so passionately, as many others have done. Looking at all the factors involved, it is a finely balanced decision. Many wrongly demonise those opposed to Heathrow expansion as anti-progress or the like. I understand the concerns and objections of those who feel that this is an expansion too far.
Fortunately, I can look at the expansion from a distance—literally. I am not involved in any difficult changes or the upheaval that will happen across a large swathe of the local community around Heathrow and across London. Equally, it is also madness to have umpteen aircraft circling the south-east of England waiting for a slot and burning fuel pointlessly due to a lack of capacity on the ground. Continuous ascent and descent is crucial to making CO2 savings that will eventually be fully realised by the implementation of airspace modernisation. Incidentally, that is another strand of transport decarbonisation on which, despite the excellent work of the Airspace Change Organising Group and NATS, the Government have shown no urgency whatsoever.
Clearly, covid had a huge impact. We can still see the impact on passenger numbers across the sector, not just at Heathrow. If—or, more likely, when—numbers bounce back to 2019 figures, 80 million passengers will use Heathrow annually and there will be nearly half a million aircraft movements.
At the moment, there is no extra capacity in the London area. The concept of Boris island as a way to increase capacity has sunk to the bottom of the deep blue sea—rather like his bridge to Northern Ireland. Whatever connectivity benefits HS2 might bring to central London have been postponed until who knows when, after the Government’s decision to delay work on the Euston leg. If any Heathrow expansion goes ahead, regional connectivity must be at the heart of plans for how to use the extra capacity and resource. It would be ludicrous if a new asset of national importance was dominated by intercontinental A380s, Dreamliners and a new terminal packed with lucrative first-class passengers, rather than being used to transform and turbo-boost connectivity to other parts of these isles, particularly in the light of the utter shambles of HS2.
At the moment, Loganair is forced to lease Heathrow slots from British Airways to provide connectivity with Scotland, rather than being able to access Heathrow on its own terms and in its own right. The two Members representing Dundee, my right hon. Friend the Member for Dundee East (Stewart Hosie) and my hon. Friend the Member for Dundee West (Chris Law), will be well aware of the issues involved in ensuring a viable long-term future for the air link between that city and London. Loganair now serves the Dundee-London route from Heathrow, following the switch from London City airport earlier this month. It has managed to keep the London route on track, and passenger numbers from Dundee are at their highest for years. It also provides Orkney and Shetland with connectivity, showing the value of Heathrow slots to airports in Scotland and across these isles.
Heathrow used to be a public asset that was owned by the public and responsible to the public. It is unlikely that it will return to public hands any time soon, but it still has a duty and an obligation to the public to provide a public service—a service for everyone in these isles. Of course, it would be far better to have direct links from Scotland—particularly Glasgow, considering that Glasgow airport is in my constituency—to the rest of Europe and the world, so that we can cut out the middle man in the south-east and travel straight to our destination, and indeed transport our high-value exports directly to the customer, rather than shipping them through London.
But in the meantime, while Scotland continues the process of achieving full self-government and full membership of the EU, Heathrow must act in the best interests of us all, and that means supporting connectivity to and from the rest of these isles to London. It would be ignoring reality to deny the expansion of Heathrow without appropriate countermeasures to move aviation towards a net zero state. Developing sustainable aviation fuels can mitigate the impact of air travel. It is disappointing, to say the least, that we lag so far behind the rest of the world in investing in SAFs and putting them at the heart of the UK aviation sector. I understand that the consultation on the SAF mandate is ongoing and is scheduled to end next month. After that will be months of cogitation by the UK Government. If we are lucky, there might be an outcome ahead of the next general election, although I would not bet the house on it. This should have been done years ago, when the UK could have had taken a lead in developing SAFs and pioneering the technology required to produce them.
Inverness airport, which is owned by the Scottish Government, has recently introduced SAFs for all customers at the facility. That will surely help to reduce its carbon footprint as it aims to become the first zero-emission aviation region by 2040, but we need a sea change across the sector if we are serious about cutting emissions and mitigating the undoubted impact that the Heathrow expansion will have. I hope that sea change happens sooner rather than later.
Jesse Norman
I do not have much time, but I think the Chamber knows that the funding per head and the sources of revenue that exist in London are vastly greater than in other parts of the country, and it is appropriate that that money should be properly invested alongside any other support that can be given.
We are not going to be distracted from this important topic. On a more constructive point, it is noticeable that the Opposition’s position on the issue of Heathrow expansion is not so very different from that of the Government. It is important to explore what the Government’s position is.
Hon. Members will recall that, in 2015, the independent Airports Commission’s final report concluded that a new north-west runway at Heathrow airport was the best solution to deliver the future additional airport capacity the country required. The Government considered the commission’s recommendation and announced in October 2016 that they agreed with the conclusions.
The Government then developed a draft airports national policy statement that provided the framework and criteria against which a development consent application would be judged. The draft statement was published for consultation in 2017 and scrutinised by the Transport Committee, before being laid before Parliament. In June 2018, the airports national policy statement was designated, following Parliament voting overwhelmingly in favour of the north-west runway proposal, by 415 votes to 119. That is an overwhelming majority in favour of the north-west runway proposal. Following its designation, the airports national policy statement was subject to a number of legal challenges, which have been heard in the High Court, the Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court. The legal challenges concluded in December 2020, when the Supreme Court unanimously concluded that the airports national policy statement is lawful.
Challenges against the statement, however, did not end there. The Planning Act 2008 requires the Secretary of State to review a national policy statement whenever they consider it appropriate to do so. Between 2019 and 2021, the Department received numerous requests from third parties to review it. When the Supreme Court determined that the airports national policy statement once again had legal effect, those review requests were considered. In September 2021, the then Secretary of State for Transport decided that it was not appropriate at that time to review the airports national policy statement. The Government said that the matter would be considered again after the jet zero strategy was published, and that the timing of re-consideration would need to have regard to the availability of long-term aviation demand forecasts.
The jet zero strategy was published in July last year and sets out the Government’s approach to achieving net zero aviation by 2050. The idea that the Government have not thought at length and in depth about this, and set out a strategy for achieving it, as was raised earlier in the debate, is nonsense. The jet zero strategy and its accompanying documents set that out. The strategy focuses on the rapid development of technologies in a way that maintains the benefits of air travel while maximising the opportunities that decarbonisation can bring to the UK. It creates a strategic framework for aviation decarbonisation.
It is clear that the Government continue to support airport growth where it is justified, and that expansion of any airport in England must meet our strict climate change obligations to be able to proceed. The Government’s approach to sustainable aviation growth is supported by analysis that shows that the country can achieve net zero emissions by 2050 without the need to intervene directly to limit aviation growth. The jet zero strategy set out a range of measures to meet net zero. I will touch on three of those.
First, we are supporting the development of new, zero-carbon emission aircraft technology through the Aerospace Technology Institute programme. An example of that is the announcement last week by Rolls-Royce that it has commenced the testing of its UltraFan technology, which will enable efficiency improvements in current and future aircraft and is 100% SAF compatible.
Secondly, this year the Government have conducted a call for evidence on implementation of a 2040 zero-emission airport operations target in England. My Department is currently considering responses and will publish a Government response shortly. Thirdly, the suggestion that this country is behind its international competitors on sustainable aviation fuels is entirely wrong. We have published a consultation on the SAF mandate, and that is currently available for discussion.
Jesse Norman
I have no time, I am afraid. I have to stop in half a minute in order to allow the hon. Member for Putney to wind up the debate. I wish I had more time, but I am afraid that interventions and other speeches have not allowed for it.
Turning quickly back to covid-19, Members will be aware that covid-19 drastically revised the use of air transport. Almost overnight, most of the country’s aircraft fleet was grounded. Thankfully, the UK is now on the way to recovery, but we have not yet returned to the demand before the pandemic, and uncertainty remains around the long-term impact that the pandemic has had on aviation demand. Further work therefore needs to be undertaken before any future forecasts can be developed.
I think I had better wind up there. I apologise, Ms Elliott, for having to truncate my speech owing to the pressure of time.
Draft Road Vehicles (Authorised Weight) (Amendment) Regulations 2023
Gavin Newlands Excerpts(11 months, 3 weeks ago)
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Gavin Newlands (Paisley and Renfrewshire North) (SNP)
It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mr Dowd. My party will not be voting against the measures that the Government are bringing forward; in fact, we support them. However, as usual with my support for anything Conservative, there is a “but”, and it is in the form of a couple of queries for the Minister.
I have heard from industry that what is essentially 2 tonnes of extra payload for most HGVs would overload the rear axle. The Minister may be aware of that, so perhaps he can tell us what he plans to do about it. As it stands, some of what is proposed may be undeliverable for the industry.
Secondly, the regulations are limited to a number of vehicles and do not include 44-tonne HGVs, which currently make up a quarter of the UK fleet. Could the Minister tell us why the weight limit has not increased for the 44-tonne HGVs as well? That would give us a clue about the future direction, because an increase to 48 tonnes overall could potentially be accommodated.
That being said, as the hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough mentioned, the road network will not be any easier to maintain with all these weight increases to HGVs. What will the Government do to make sure that councils have the money to ensure that local road networks are adequate? As I saw on the Transport Committee visit to Buckinghamshire, local roads have been badly impacted by HGVs related to High Speed 2.
Those are my three questions for the Minister. If he could address them, I would be grateful.
Autonomous Last-mile Delivery
Gavin Newlands Excerpts(11 months, 3 weeks ago)
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Gavin Newlands (Paisley and Renfrewshire North) (SNP)
It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mr Twigg.
I congratulate the hon. Member for Milton Keynes North (Ben Everitt) on securing the debate. He comprehensively set out all the advantages of last-mile autonomous vehicles. He started by asking us to imagine a future 30 or 40 years down the line. I do not know about you, Mr Twigg, but with the current state of politics, particularly in this building, I struggle to look three or four weeks down the line, let alone 30 or 40 years, but I take his point. I am aware of Starship—I have been to a parliamentary reception for it—and I will come on to a sighting of its robots in the wild just last week. The hon. Member mentioned that they are good for reducing traffic and congestion, thereby improving air quality.
The hon. Member for Havant (Alan Mak) brought up the fourth industrial revolution, which is most unlike him, but it was a pertinent point. The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon)—I call him the hon. Member for Westminster Hall East—is no longer in his place, but he was right to mention fears about the impact of automation on jobs, because we sometimes hear about that from the public. He also mentioned the issue of network signals and connections. Last week, as I travelled through much of rural Buckinghamshire, I was unable to check in for a flight for over an hour, owing to the signal in that part of the world.
The hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston (Andrew Western) made an excellent point but also used the opportunity to make a nice political jibe about the local council, which I very much enjoyed. The hon. Member for Milton Keynes South (Iain Stewart), who chairs the Transport Committee, of which I am a member, supported many of the points made by his colleague the hon. Member for Milton Keynes North in setting out the advantages of autonomous robots, but he also made a couple of good points linking them to the wider supply chain and the decarbonisation of the whole sector. He used them as a case in point, whereby the public were won over to the advantages of autonomous or smart tech, which is completely the opposite of the experience with smart motorways.
I referred to my trip—our trip, I should say, because the Chair is present—with the Transport Committee to Buckinghamshire to hear more about local issues with High Speed 2. It ended with a visit to Buckinghamshire Railway Centre to hear evidence from the Minister and HS2 Ltd, but the trip took me through Milton Keynes and past a couple of autonomous robots plying their trade on the streets by delivering shopping and drinks to households across a large part of Milton Keynes. It was somewhat of a change of scene to be surrounded, just hours later, by steam locomotives and carriages from railway history—artefacts from the past, when “autonomous delivery” meant letting the horse pull the cart by itself.
I have seen the Starship robots before, and they are impressive in action. They appear to be fairly popular with a lot of the residents of Milton Keynes. I can certainly see the appeal in being greeted with my messages and a song when I collect my purchase, as the hon. Member for Milton Keynes South said, although having had two young kids when I was elected, I draw the line at yet more “Baby Shark”. If the Minister could take the hon. Gentleman up on the suggestion to supply a new song, that would be fantastic.
The robots serve a purpose in Milton Keynes, but by definition their coverage is limited. They would not fare well delivering to the average three-storey tenement in Glasgow, for example, and it is hard to see how high-rise flats would be covered without a robotic finger for the lift. Starship itself told the Transport Committee fairly recently that the challenge of rolling out its service to more rural areas is big compared with the challenge of rolling it out in a modern, planned new town such as Milton Keynes.
There is also a real question of where exactly the machines themselves would fit into the legislative landscape. The operators of the Starship scheme admitted to the Committee that they were
“operating in a grey area”
at the moment. As with bikes and e-scooters, it is unclear whether it is legal for the robots to be on the pavements rather than the road. We are still grappling with the legal framework for electric scooters, and the mood music about a future transport Bill suggests that their regulation, or otherwise, will have to wait until after the general election.
If autonomous deliveries are to become the norm—that may or may not be the case—they will need a clear regulatory and legislative footing that ensures that they are subject to clear restrictions and licensing. The delay to the transport Bill gives the Government the opportunity to get ahead of the curve and to draft appropriately. We are still in the early stages of the technology’s deployment, and getting regulations on the statute book now will allow us to avoid the problems that we have with e-scooters. We are still waiting for e-scooters to be regulated, yet a million of the devices are out on streets and pavements. The continued lack of regulation means that, for example, most train companies will not allow them on board because of fears that the batteries are a fire risk. This is not a case of regulating just for the sake of it.
We also have to be wary of those peddling only good news and good outcomes from this technology. The potential for misuse must be balanced with the potential benefits of autonomous deliveries. It is not hard to foresee the same technology and hardware being used, whether by individuals or by bigger fish—potentially even state actors—to deliver goods that are a lot less legitimate than a carton of milk and half a dozen eggs. It is also not hard to imagine someone illegally accessing the network and operating system on which the vehicles rely and creating havoc.
The robots currently in operation might have a lower speed, but they still present potential obstacles for pedestrians, particularly those with disabilities or visual impairments. Given the limited geographic areas covered by Starship and the like, there may be little conflict now, but if Starship’s service expands and other operators follow in its wake in the same area, there may be fleets of competing robots trundling up and down pavements in towns and cities across the country.
I have painted a fairly negative picture. I view the technology positively, but regulation is required. With the best will, programming and AI in the world, it will become harder to marry up the needs of autonomous deliveries with the needs of pedestrians and pavement users. That is where regulation is required. The example of e-scooters shows the problems inherent in allowing a regulatory grey area to grow to a point where regulation is urgently required.
How we as a society use a product of scientific progress is up to us to determine. Just because a technology is there does not mean that it is a good idea. There is much to commend in the move to autonomous delivery at local level, given the efficiencies and reductions in the resources used to keep households going. Removing the need for shorter car and van deliveries, and therefore reducing road use, will help to reduce congestion, particularly in urban areas, and carbon emissions. There will inevitably be teething problems as services are rolled out—that is the nature of installing and operating something novel and untested in a real-world environment —but that should not clash with the need for regulation that reflects the balancing act required between innovation and the rights of others. Like with most technologies, it is at the times when it fails that autonomous delivery will need to be properly considered.
Although I would have wanted a transport Bill to be in the pipeline—it is not as if there is a lack of content for a transport Bill—the delay in its introduction means that the Government have a chance to do the in-depth work needed to create a regulatory framework that will work for autonomous deliveries, not just in the short term but further down the line. I hope that the Minister will take that message back to his colleagues and ensure that whenever the Bill drops, it can be taken forward with a package of measures that fully deals with autonomous deliveries.
Buses: Funding
Gavin Newlands Excerpts(11 months, 3 weeks ago)
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Gavin Newlands (Paisley and Renfrewshire North) (SNP)
In principle, I welcome today’s announcement on fares by the Government. Anything that helps to make bus travel more attractive and drives modal shift is to be welcomed. [Interruption.] Just wait—there’s more!
In Scotland, we have taken a different approach, and extended free bus travel to include every Scottish resident under the age of 22. The feedback thus far is that we are seeing a big increase in travel among those groups, getting them in the habit of taking the bus and normalising public transport. However, when it comes to real investment and spending on bus infrastructure, I am afraid the DFT is still lagging well behind. Of the 3,500 buses farcically claimed by the UK Government as helping meet their target of 4,000 zero-emission buses for England outside London, nearly a fifth are funded by the Scottish Government, over whom the Minister has zero jurisdiction. He is using the success of the Scottish Government and others to cover for their own failure.
Incidentally, four weeks ago the Secretary of State promised the House that he place a letter in the Library setting out the details of the pledge and of delivery thus far, but we are yet to see that letter placed in the Library.
In Scotland, ScotZEB 2—the Scottish zero-emission bus challenge fund 2—was announced just this week, providing another £58 million to further enhance and improve bus services across the country, including in my own constituency. This will bring Scotland’s zero-emission bus fleet up to about the equivalent of 8,000 buses in England. In contrast, of the 1,342 buses in England outside London claimed as funded under the ZEBRA—zero-emission bus regional areas—scheme, only six are on the road. If I looked out of the window of my constituency office in Renfrew, in 15 minutes I would see more zero-emission buses passing by, serving passengers and contributing to the net zero transition, than are actually on the road through this Government’s ZEBRA scheme.
Will the Minister do the right thing, unlock the logjam in the ZEBRA scheme in England and at least try to catch up with its success in Scotland, and will he confirm that every penny spent as a result of this announcement will be subject to Barnett consequentials to allow the Scottish Government to continue their investment in our public transport network—investment that builds for an electric future?
Mr Holden
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his opening remarks, and I will address some of his later ones. On the Barnett consequentials—just to start off with that—all this money has been found within the Department for Transport. We are cutting our cloth without asking for more cash from taxpayers, which is exactly what we need to be doing in this situation.
It is interesting that the hon. Gentleman concentrated on talking about the ZEBRA scheme, which is not really the topic of today’s statement. It is interesting that he did not mention anything else because the Scottish national party is obviously not matching our £2 bus fare right across Scotland, which is quite a surprise. [Interruption.] Only people under the age of 22, the hon. Gentleman shouts at me, have free bus travel. People do not have that in Scotland; actually, it has no £2 fare cap at all. That is something we are delivering this year and will be continuing to deliver next year here in England.
In fact, one of the major bus operators spoke recently about the crisis of buses in Scotland due to the Scottish Government’s
“mix of ill-informed emotion and political dogma”,
while failing to help them meet the needs of reliant Scots—
Rail Services
Gavin Newlands Excerpts(12 months ago)
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Mr Harper
I am grateful to my hon. Friend who has over a long period raised these issues on behalf of her constituents, and I thank her for doing so. As I said in my statement, we are not going to see overnight change. This is an important decision to reset those relationships; how quickly we can improve services will depend on the response of others to those reset relationships and how the new management of the company uses that. I hope we will see early results, but I have been clear to the House, both when I made my previous statement on Avanti and today, that there is not a magic wand, but I hope this is an opportunity to reset those relationships and get things moving in the right direction.
Gavin Newlands (Paisley and Renfrewshire North) (SNP)
Back in January I said to the rail Minister, the hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle (Huw Merriman), that in the prior week TPE could not point to a single day when it ran the emergency timetable promised. The improvements have been glacial and the Government have finally taken the action so many of us called for some time ago. TPE blamed anyone but itself, including workers and the unions, for the chronically poor service. The truth is it remains the worst performer and action had to be taken.
It is good to see another England-based operator nationalised; slowly but surely the UK Government are following in Scotland’s footsteps. The Secretary of State said that nationalisation is a “soundbite, not a solution”—despite it being the solution the Government have gone for. I would gently say to him that privatisation has been a bourach not a benefit.
We welcome the UK Government following the lead of the Scottish Government in nationalising an under- performing rail service and would note that this means this anti-nationalisation Tory party has now nationalised four rail services in five years. The Tories are as confused as the Leader of the Opposition, who pledged to nationalise the railways but then recently seemed to backtrack on that; it has at the very least hit signal failures.
Only 10% of people in the UK support private ownership of the railways, and even among Tory voters only 13% support privatised railways. The UK Government’s privatisation obsession is out of step with both the wider public and their own voters’ desires. Is it not time therefore for the Government to listen to the experts, the workers and the voters, and end the failed experiment of privatisation?
Disputes involving the unions and the Scottish Government were resolved very quickly, yet Scots passengers have faced disruption due to this Government’s unwillingness and inability to resolve disputes. Why does the Secretary of State think that Scotland has managed to resolve strikes so much more efficiently than this Government?
Mr Harper
I think there were two substantive questions there and I will deal with both of them, but, first, I will accept the hon. Gentleman’s welcome for my decision— I think there was a welcome there.
On industrial action, it does take two to reach a deal. From our side, fair and reasonable offers have been put on the table. They are broadly in line with the offers made to the RMT staff who work for Network Rail which, when put to the members of the union, were accepted overwhelmingly, with a 90% turnout and 76% in favour. Similar value offers with reform have been made to RMT staff working for the train operating companies and have not been put to the members. So the clear outstanding issue is not a new offer but for the offers to be put to the members of the trade unions to enable them to make a decision. There is also an offer on the table for train drivers in the ASLEF union, which has not been put to members. As I said, that would take their average salaries to £65,000 a year. I think that offer is at least worth putting to them. That is the outstanding piece of work that needs to take place. We have done our bit of that job.
The reason why the Scottish Government reached conclusions was that they caved in. They have not delivered reform, and I think they have overpaid with taxpayers’ money. There is a balance to strike in offers that are fair and reasonable to the workers in the industry and the passengers it serves, as well as to the taxpayer. That is a responsibility that I take very seriously.
Oral Answers to Questions
Gavin Newlands Excerpts(1 year ago)
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Gavin Newlands (Paisley and Renfrewshire North) (SNP)
The Seafarers’ Wages Act remains a real missed opportunity. Let us look at points six to nine of the Government’s nine-point plan:
“Developing a statutory code for ‘fire and rehire’ practices”?
Nope.
“Taking action against company leaders who break the law”?
Nope.
“Improving the long-term working conditions of seafarers”?
Nope. As the hon. Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East (Mike Kane) asked, where is the seafarers’ charter?
“Encouraging more ships to operate under the UK flag”?
Nope. The figures went down by another 3% last year and are down by 30% since the Tories came to power. Other than the utterly anaemic Seafarers’ Wages Act, what have the Tories ever done for seafarers?
Mr Holden
When SNP Members start talking about ferries, we can tell that they think they are on to a good one. It is interesting that they have not raised the subject of motor homes today instead.
Work on the seafarers’ charter continues as we speak, and I will update the House as soon as more information is available.
Gavin Newlands (Paisley and Renfrewshire North) (SNP)
The Government had a relative paucity of ambition on Active Travel before slashing the budget. They now plan to spend less than £1 per head in England outside London, compared with £17 per head in Wales and £50 in Scotland—5,000% more. In the Transport Committee yesterday, the Secretary of State spoke of other Active Travel spending not in core funding, but we have that, too, with the Advanced Manufacturing Innovation District Scotland—AMIDS—levelling-up project and the River Cart walking and wheeling bridge city deal project in my constituency. Without the waffle, what will the Government do to deliver transformational change—
Mr Speaker
Order. I must help Members from all parts of the House. Topical questions must be short and sweet—quick answers, quick questions. Minister, please show us an example.
Mr Holden
I thank my hon. Friend for those important points. I drive up the A1 myself on a regular basis to my North West Durham constituency, so I am aware of the issues around Sandy and Biggleswade. I will continue to work with National Highways and the Secretary of State to see what more can be done to improve life for my hon. Friend’s constituents.
Gavin Newlands
On a point of order, Mr Speaker, in answer to my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow South West (Chris Stephens), the Minister said, “If we look at the number that have been ordered alone: for zero emission bus regional areas, the ZEBRA scheme, 1,342”, but, as was discussed in the Transport Committee yesterday, that number is not correct. In the ZEBRA scheme, there have been 503 buses ordered, only six of which are on the road, and 792 are funded. The Minister was talking about the total funded, and one of the big issues is that funding is not being delivered. I appreciate that this is not a question for you, Mr Speaker—
HS2: Revised Timetable and Budget
Gavin Newlands Excerpts(1 year, 1 month ago)
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Gavin Newlands (Paisley and Renfrewshire North) (SNP)
I almost feel sorry for the Minister—almost. Mr Speaker, you will know that the north of England has seen cut after cut not just to HS2, but to any real modernisation of its rail network, with HS2 to Leeds cancelled and Northern Powerhouse Rail cut to the bone. We on the SNP Benches have supported HS2 because we believe increased sustainable connectivity is to all our benefit. However, what we have now is a gold-plated commuter line of just over 100 miles for two cities in the south of this island, costing nearly £50 billion, while the rest of the country is expected to fight for scraps from the table.
Combined with the announcement of slashed funding for active travel, which leaves England, outside of Greater London, receiving less than £1 per person per year—30 times less than Scotland—that makes it clear that the Government regard transport funding outside the M25 as nothing more than a rounding error. Thankfully, we in Scotland have a Parliament and a Government investing in our rail network, investing in active travel and taking transport decarbonisation seriously, so can the Minister tell me in which decade high-speed rail will reach the Scottish border?
Huw Merriman
The Government are plainly not committed only to delivery between London and Birmingham, because the entire plan is predicated on a two-year rephasing of the parts going up towards Crewe from the midlands. Beyond that, up to Manchester, the indicative timeline does not change at all. The Bill Select Committee remains in place, as does its brief, so that commitment is there. It is not a commitment just to the south-east, and the hon. Member has certainly got that wrong. The £96 billion integrated rail plan is based solely on the midlands and the north, and that shows this Government’s desire to level up across the midlands and the north, as opposed to spending money in the south-east.
Active travel is not part of this urgent question, but £3 billion will be spent by this Government on active travel during this Parliament. There are levelling-up fund bids that go toward active travel. We are absolutely passionate and committed to the delivery of active travel, and that will continue, as will our delivery of HS2.